


Knights and Thieves

by eriah211



Series: Other Land [3]
Category: Primeval
Genre: Action, Alligators & Crocodiles, Alternate Timelines, Divergent Timelines, Gen, Insecurity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-10-17 17:32:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10598799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eriah211/pseuds/eriah211
Summary: Becker's day was going from bad to worse. Set in my Other Land AU.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to the ever wonderful fredbassett for the beta, all remaining mistakes are mine.
> 
> Part of my Other Land series. Sequel to The Playing Cards fic. Nick is now back at the ARC, as are Lester and Ryan, but there are still people missing and not everything is the way it used to be.
> 
> Originally posted on Livejournal in 2016.

 

There had been an anomaly alert half an hour ago, when Becker and his team were coming back from another boring shift babysitting a locked anomaly, and as soon as he had heard the news, Becker had volunteered his team for the mission. He had been waiting for a chance to put their skills to work on a more useful task and he had told the ARC they were already almost there, which was, to be honest, almost true.  
  
Lately, Becker’s team had been stuck with the most boring missions in the field. Coincidence, he wanted to think, but he was worried it might turn into a habit and he was dying to show Lester that his team could manage difficult situations as well as Ryan’s team.  
  
It wasn’t a competition, he knew that, of course. Both teams worked co-ordinately and Ryan and Becker had the same rank and duties in the ARC security. For now, at least. But he had read Nick Cutter’s report and it showed that while Becker had been Helen’s clueless lackey, Ryan had been a key element in her fall. Furthermore, even if it had happened in a different timeline, the man had actually died heroically on duty, for fuck’s sake. Becker was lucky there really was no competition because he knew there was literally nothing that could outweigh a heroic death.  


 

 

***

 

  
When they arrived at the location of the anomaly, they found a nervous-looking security guard waiting for them at the gates of the construction site.  
A big sign outside the partly-completed apartment building promised ‘First quality materials and solid construction’ and for once, the almost-finished block of flats did indeed look as if they had kept their word.  
  
There had been an anomaly alert in the same place the week before, but by the time the team had arrived, the anomaly had already closed and there was no sign of any creature incursion. When they had asked the workers about anything unusual in the previous few hours, they had only mentioned a bit of water damage and the theft of some building material, but they had admitted it happened sometimes on the job. This time, though, there was certainly something unusual going on, by the look on the guard’s face.  
  
The man, who looked quite relieved to have any kind of backup, explained that he had been inspecting the exterior fencing,  shortly after all the workers had left, when he had seen some lights up on the first floor.  
  
“There is water everywhere, there must be a big leak somewhere, and those lights... I don’t know what they are,” the guard told them. “I’ve already called the company to report the incident. They’ve said they’ll be sending somebody soon.”  
  
“Have you seen anybody around the place?” Becker asked him.  
  
“Not really,” the man answered hesitantly.  
  
Becker recognised the expression on the man’s face. He had seen it frequently since he’d started working for the ARC. It was the face of a man that had seen something that couldn’t be real but didn’t want to sound like a lunatic.  
  
“A stray animal maybe?” Becker tried again. “Sometimes they get inside construction sites and cause a lot of trouble...”  
  
“Well, I think I saw some weird dogs,” the man admitted reluctantly. “But I couldn’t see them clearly. It was already getting dark.”  
  
Becker pretended to accept the man’s version and asked him to turn on the auxiliary lights inside the building to help them find the ‘stray dogs’ more easily.  
  
“Has the local council sent you?” The guard asked, confused. “Because of the... dogs?”  
  
“Something like that,” Becker said.  
  
Becker left one of his men outside with the guard, waiting for Cutter and Connor, who were on their way with the locking mechanism. The soldier was also supposed to stand guard, and keep whoever the company had sent to help, out of their way while the rest did their job, but Becker wished he didn’t have to waste one of his men just to keep the civilians away. They used to have somebody for that job, but Cutter had driven their last PR crazy in two months. The man had resigned and walked out of the ARC muttering something about insufferable Scottish madmen and he hadn’t been replaced yet.  
  
Once they went inside the building they easily found the anomaly by following the source of the water that was already covering the hall of the first floor and falling down the stairs. The source of the ‘leak’, as Becker had feared, was, in fact, the anomaly itself.  
  
They couldn’t stop the flooding until Connor arrived with the locking mechanism so they focussed on finding the ‘stray dogs’ the guard had mentioned. That ended up not being too difficult either and Becker was relieved, and even a bit amused, when they found a strange mix of a boar and a pony munching some wet cardboard.  
  
The creature didn’t seem dangerous and sedating it wasn’t a big problem. It was the size of a dog and not too heavy so they decided to let it sleep over a big workbench that was in the hall to keep it away from the water. Easy and simple. Some distant splashing sounds, though, reminded them that other creatures were still running around. They still had work to do.  
  
Many of the flats on that floor hadn’t had their front doors put on yet and that meant a lot of possible places in which to hide. The team had to split to cover the area more effectively, but Becker warned his men to contact him immediately if they discovered any new threat wandering around.  
  
As he started the search, Becker noticed the water flow leaking from the anomaly had increased considerably. It was now coming in small waves across the surface of the hall, carrying debris along with it and Becker wondered if there was a tide coming in or a flooding on the other side of the anomaly. That could be a hell of a mess if they didn’t manage to close it soon.  
  
Walking around quietly wasn’t an option since the whole place had started to look like a children’s paddling pool, but, fortunately, the little weird ponies weren’t too difficult to locate either. Becker found one of them sloshing around in what was going to be somebody’s kitchen and sedated it quickly before it could run away. He carried it to the main hall and left it safely over the workbench, beside the other sleeping creature.  
  
He was walking back to the empty flat to resume the search when he heard another splashing to his left and saw one of those creatures trotting away towards the end of the hall. It was a fast little pony, Becker thought, running after it. Then his feet slipped on something and he fell.  
  
A fucking plastic sheet had been covering that part of the floor, and water and forward momentum made Becker slide forward, right towards the lift shaft. The doors weren’t still in place and the plastic bands that warned the workers would do nothing to stop him.  
  
Becker tried desperately to get a hold of something and he managed to hang on to the door frame for a split second, but then his fingers slipped.

  
Cause of injury: slipping on a wet floor. It was going to look great on his file, he had time to think while he fell down the lift shaft.  


 

 

***

 

  
Fortunately, the fall wasn’t too bad. The small lift shaft was finished, but the machinery hadn’t been installed yet so there weren’t big pieces of metal waiting for him down there and instead he found a little, dirty pool.  
  
The place, as advertised outside, was so well-constructed that the water that was cascading from the upper floor was slowly flooding the place instead of leaking through cracks and bad-welded joints as it could have been expected. There wasn’t enough water for a nice dive, but it was enough to break the fall and Becker only hurt one ankle and his pride when he fell.  
  
With water up to his neck, Becker cursed and stood there, catching his breath, as water kept falling over him. He recovered his tranquillizer rifle from the bottom of the pit and when he looked up, trying to find a way out, he cursed again. The first option would have been the ground floor opening, but solid lift doors were already in place there.  
  
Becker decided to give it a go anyway. He slung the rifle across his back and slowly and painfully started climbing up the slippery walls. He managed to reach the ground floor and tried to open the doors, but they didn’t move an inch. A nice, solid door like that would have been great up on the first floor to stop him from falling down, but it looked like it wasn’t his lucky day.  
  
Becker yelled and banged his hand on the metal doors, hoping one of his men would hear him down there. He banged it hard so he would be heard above the noise of the cascading water, but then his feet slipped and he fell down into the pool of dirty water again.  
  
This time his feet didn’t touch the floor, but he was more worried about debris than drowning. Now small branches had started falling, and Becker wondered how long it was going to be until bigger things would start being carried in by the flooding.  
  
He looked at the walls surrounding him and considered how good his chances of climbing up to the first floor were. It had already been difficult to reach the ground floor so it didn’t look like climbing higher with a hurt ankle was going to be a very successful plan. As much as he hated the idea of giving up, Becker decided it was time to call his men and wait for help, if the supposedly waterproof comms still worked, of course.  
  
He was trying to get a signal when he heard loud noises coming from above and he realised with relief that somebody was trying to open the ground floor doors by force. It looked like his men had heard him and were coming to the rescue.  
  
With a loud, creaking noise, the door finally opened and a rope was thrown down to him.  
  
“Grab it, mate! We’ll haul you up!” an unknown voice yelled.  
  
As it seemed, his rescuer wasn’t any of his men, but he was going to worry about that once he was out of that tiny pool.  
  
When he reached the ground floor he was met by the two not so unfamiliar faces of Danny and Patrick Quinn. Their part on Helen’s fall was also detailed in Nick Cutter’s report and it was accompanied by very telling mug shots that had allowed Becker to recognize them a few times before, nosing about among the crowd that sometimes gathered around the anomaly sites.  
  
“What are you doing here?” Becker blurted out.  
  
“No ‘thank you’ first, man?” Danny said. “That’s not very nice.”  
  
“You can’t be here, you’re trespassing!” Becker added, ignoring the jab.  
  
 “You’re welcome,” Patrick said, rolling his eyes.  
  
Becker was about to add something harsh when a cry of pain and a round of shots resounded through the building.  
  
The soldier stared at the brothers’ surprised faces for a second and then pushed his way through them as he started limping towards the stairs.  
  
“Get out of the building, it’s not safe,” he told them as he was walking away. “And if you find Cutter on your way out, tell him to hurry the fuck up!”  


 

 

***

 

Becker had just reached the stairs when a frantic pony came rushing down. It swooshed past without even looking at him.  
  
Becker’s attention automatically turned to the top of the stairs as he got ready for trouble, but he had hardly had time to raise his rifle when a huge, scaleless crocodile rushed down the stairs following its prey.  
  
Becker shot the creature, but even though he was right on target, the low-dose darts that he had been using to sedate the ponies clearly weren’t enough to stop a big crocodile. The creature just twisted, annoyed, but immediately focussed its attention on the new prey that was waiting down the stairs.  
  
The crocodile surged forward using its strong, long legs as Becker tried to reach for his gun, but then he was pushed aside by a strong tackle.  
  
Becker tried to stand up as fast as possible, disentangling himself from the reckless Danny Quinn’s grasp, because the crocodile, which had stopped few metres away, in the middle of the hall, seemed slightly confused by the sudden disappearance of the prey, but that wasn’t going to buy them much time.  
  
“Oi!” Patrick yelled.  
  
He jumped in, armed with a plank of wood and he hit hard the crocodile on the side of the head.  
  
It looked like recklessness ran in the family, Becker thought as he saw the plank breaking in half on impact, leaving the young man defenceless.  
  
Luckily for him, right then another dart struck the crocodile’s back as one of the soldiers came down the stairs and the creature, confused by the sudden attack and the effect of the sedative, twisted viciously around itself. Patrick had to jump back to avoid a nasty blow from the strong tail, but he managed to get away without catching the creature’s attention.  
  
Becker aimed his gun at the crocodile, waiting to see if the second dose would work, but ready to act more bluntly if necessary.  
  
The creature, annoyed and confused, decided to make a run for the main hall entrance, but the sedative was finally working and it could only take a few steps before it collapsed.  
  
Connor and Cutter chose that moment to come in, carrying the locking mechanism suitcases and they stopped dead at the sight of the strange gathering in the hall.  
  
“Nice to see you again, man!” Danny said to Nick Cutter, cheerfully. “You missed the fun!”  
  
Even Patrick rolled his eyes at that.  


 

 

***

 

 

Once the anomaly was finally locked, Becker escorted the Quinn brothers out of the site while the rest of the team made sure they had caught all the creatures that had come through.  
  
“Are we going to get a reward for helping today?” Danny asked hopefully.  
  
 “You shouldn’t be here in the first place, this is a private property,” Becker replied. “You’re lucky we aren’t intending to hand you over to the police.”  
  
“Hey! We saved your life, mate, remember?” Patrick said, offended.  
  
“Well, yes, you sort of helped,” Becker admitted reluctantly. “But what were you doing here anyway? How did you even know there was an anomaly inside?”  
  
Becker had always spotted them outside anomaly sites that had attracted media attention. This time though, they had arrived shortly after his team, if not first, and he wanted to know how they had done it.  
  
“A friend told us he saw some weird lights here the other day,” Danny vaguely explained.  
  
“And like the worried citizens we are, we came to check and see if everything was OK,” Patrick added.  
  
“Worried citizens?” Becker repeated in disbelief.  
  
“And amateur anthropologists,” Danny added with a cheeky grin.  
  
“Your friend wouldn’t happen to know anything about some missing building material, would he?” Becker asked as he opened the gate to let them out.  
  
“I don’t think so,” Danny replied. “But I’ll ask him, just in case and I’ll tell you next time, OK? See you around, mate!”  
  
There was no doubt they would be seeing them again, Becker thought as he watched them walk away. With a sigh, Becker shrugged in resignation and then went back to the building, limping lightly.

 

  
  
END


End file.
